


Changes

by TwoPisces



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoPisces/pseuds/TwoPisces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to show that no one is ever truly safe, for the Third Quarter Quell, tributes will be selected from the living victors families. There will be no upper age limit. Day 7 (What If?/Change one plot point) submission to Prompts in Panem on tumblr, major character deaths, light M</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changes

Snow made it clear that he’s been unsatisfied with us. Our wedding has been scheduled for the day before the 75th Hunger Games as a way to excite the Capitol crowds. Peeta and I will have no say in anything and when I tell Peeta and Haymitch about my meeting with Snow, Peeta disappears into his own house. I don’t see him for two days while Haymitch locks himself in his bedroom with a case of white liquor.

Gale is furious when I tell him about the wedding. He punches a tree, the rough bark cutting into his skin and blood sliding from the cuts, yelling at the unfairness of it all. The absolutely control over me the Capitol has now. He begs me to go into the woods with him but when I mention Peeta, the look of betrayal he gives me takes my breath away. I try to explain to him, to tell him that I’m just trying to save everyone because I care about all of them, but he’s too hurt to hear me. He storms off back toward the District and after taking my frustration out on a few trees, I make my way back too. I end up at Peeta’s front door without really meaning to. It takes half a dozen knocks but he finally answers, a plain t-shirt and loose sleep pants hanging from his hips. I notice smudges of dried paint on his hands and dark marks under his eyes as I take him in, the air from his house smelling of fresh bread and paint.

“Katniss.”

I flinch at the coldness in his voice. He seems to notice and instead lays a hand against my arm, pulling me into the house. It’s dramatically warmer in here and I shed my jacket, pushing it over one of the hooks at the door. I turn toward him and see him eyeing me, his fingers scratching at the flaking paint there.

“Peeta...”

“Yes?”

“Just...” I swallow and look directly in his eyes. “Please don’t leave me.”

His arms wrap around me, surrounding me with his warm scent and quiet strength. I snake my arms around his waist and let him hold me. It’s the first night that we sleep in his bed together. It’s chaste but his arms wrapped around my waist, holding me close to him while his lips rest against my ear bring that hunger back again. I push it to the back of my mind and relax into him, relishing the feeling of not being alone.

-/-/-/-

We’re all sitting in my living room, Peeta and I, my mom, Prim, Haymitch, when they announce the twist for this Quarter Quell.

In order to show that no one is ever truly safe, for the Third Quarter Quell, tributes will be selected from the living victors families. There will be no upper age limit.

I hear Haymitch swear loudly and my mother gasp. Prim sobs and Peeta’s hand grasps mine painfully. I turn my head and realize that the look on his face is pure fear. All of the male tributes will come from his family. His two brothers and his father. Almost all of the female will be from mine. This is Snow’s way of proving that it has nothing to do with Haymitch anymore; we’re his true targets. We will have to mentor our family members to their deaths.

-/-/-/-

The areas for tributes are, obviously, tiny this year. My mother, Prim and Peeta’s mother are led from the crowd to the female side as I watch the Peacekeepers pluck out Peeta’s family for the male side. I watch the two older Mellark sons being led to the fenced off square, their faces full of terror, followed by Mr. Mellark. His face is blank, his clenched fists the only sign of his emotions. I’m about to turn towards a visably shaking Effie when I see a Peacekeeper toward the back of the crowd pulling someone forward. My eyes squint against the glare of the sun and then open widely when I see the man they’re leading forward.

Gale. My cousin.

Peeta notices what’s happening and swears, squeezing my hand and pulling me against his side on our platform next to Effie. I’d told him about our fight, how Gale had wanted me to run away into the forest with him but not Peeta. Peeta’s eyes had warmed and he had pressed a kiss to my lips, too briefly, before folding me into his embrace. Now, I might have to watch him die at the hands of a Career.

Effie stands on her too high, grey and yellow heels, her usual exuberance dimmed by who is being reaped this year. It seems that even for her, this is unsettling. She moves to the female bowl, still huge and sparkling with only three slips of paper in it, and pulls one out without her usual fanfare. She pulls up the sticker, opening the parchment.

“Laurel Everdeen.”

The shock registers on my mother’s face for a split second before she clears it, her face stony as she walks to the center aisle. She’s taken a half dozen steps before I hear another, too familiar voice.

“No! I volunteer!”

My eyes are drawn back to my sister, my thirteen year old sister, that has just darted out to the aisle behind my mother. My sister that has just volunteered, that I can no longer save. A sob leaves my lips and I turn into Peeta, trying to calm my chaotic breathing as my sister is led up to the stage, my mother sobbing into the ground on her knees. The crowd is restless and murmuring and even Effie is blotting her eyes with a silky green scrap of cloth. She plucks a paper from the male bowl and opens it with shaking hands.

“Babka Mellark.”

I can’t even classify the sound that leaves Peeta’s mouth as human after his father’s name is called. Peeta’s older brothers go pale, their arms wrapping around their father as Gale stares at them. Peeta is crying beside me, clutching me to him and saying “no” over and over again. Mr. Mellark is slowly pushing his sons’ arms away to start toward the stage, his eyes glued to Prim’s face, tears streaking her cheeks, when Gale’s hand lands on his shoulder. Mr. Mellark turns to look at the younger man and I feel my heart sink to my feet.

“I volunteer.”

A quiet, “oh, god” leaves Peeta and I see Haymitch with his head in his hands. My sister and Gale are going into the arena. No matter what I do, I’m going to lose at least one of them. I feel like someone is covering my ears, my vision getting blurry. I hear someone shriek my name and then darkness consumes me as I fall to the ground, Peeta’s hand under my head.

-/-/-/-

After my fainting spell, everything moves fast. Much faster than it felt when Peeta and I were in the Games. We’re pulled back and forth between trying to mentor Gale and Prim and our Capitol wedding. The interviews focus much more on our wedding than the tributes and no one seems to care that mixed in with some youthful tributes, there’s a large number of them over sixty. There’s even two that rely mostly on wheelchairs. I’m so sickened by all of it that by the day my wedding comes, it’s impossible for me to focus. The ceremony is so foreign to me, apparently what was done in ancient times, that I lose track of what’s happening. Haymitch walks with me down an aisle between hundreds of chairs full of Capitol guests that I don’t know. I’m in a frothy, jeweled gown cut low in the front and back and Peeta is in a deep blue suit with a bright pink tie. I can tell he’s just as lost as I am.

About halfway through, the brightly colored man leading the ceremony hands us two rings, mine crusted in clear stones and Peeta’s a shimmering silver. We repeat words and when Peeta goes first, he locks eyes with me. He’s promising to love and cherish me, as long as we live. I know, in this instant, he’s found a piece of this absurd ceremony that’s ours. Something that has a bit of truth in it that he can use to keep us who we are instead of Capitol puppets. It’s not a toasting, certainly nothing I would have ever imagined I would want, but in this moment, it’s what I need. 

So, I repeat the words back to him, keeping my eyes on his as I say them. As I finish, sliding the plain ring onto this finger, he gives me the biggest, most real smile I’ve seen out of him since before our Games. It warms my entire body, making my hands clench his tightly. When the brightly colored man in front of us tells Peeta to kiss his bride, he doesn’t pause. His fingers cup my head, tilting my face up to press his lips to mine. That hunger is simmering within me and I part my lips, our kiss deepening until he pulls away, the sound of the applause sinking into my brain. He trails his fingers against my cheek before reaching down to loop my hand around his elbow, heading back up the aisle to the party Snow is giving us at his mansion.

-/-/-/-

We excuse ourselves from the party early, telling people we don’t even know that we need to check on our tributes and making them promise hefty sponsor donations for wedding gifts. After we check on Gale and Prim, both sleeping after a long day of training and eating, we head to my room. It’s been converted into a shared room for us, Peeta’s few personal things moved to stand next to mine, but we don’t notice. On some level, all we want is to not be alone. To push away what tomorrow means and to know that in this awful world, at least we have each other.

Our lips crash together and our hands push and pull at the layers of fabric covering each other until we’re naked, our skin pressed together as his arousal pulses against my wetness.

“You know I love you, right?”

I nod my head, his eyes searching mine knowing I can’t say the words back. He presses into me and the sharp pain makes the breath rush out of me. He stays still, letting me move past the pain until I move my hips against his, each of us figuring out the details of this before we settle into a rhythm that builds the heat inside of me. I’m so close to the edge of whatever this feeling is but I feel him losing his rhythm, I feel that tightening in my limbs start to fade. An instant before he reaches his own peak, his fingers find a spot just above where we’re joined and the tightening returns tenfold. A second after he finds his release, I find mine, my fingers digging into his shoulders as my legs lock around his hips. He cradles me against him as he flips us over so I’m laying on his chest. 

As he holds me, the tears appear, making their way silently down my cheeks and falling against his chest. I’ve gained Peeta, but tomorrow I’ll lose at least one other person I love.

-/-/-/-

Prim dies on the second day. She walks right into an explosive that someone from the electronics district had rigged, obviously from watching our Games. Gale tried to scream at her not to move when he figured it out, but he was too late. His first kill of the games is the boy that rigged the mines.

On the tenth day, Peeta and I are woken up by a completely sober Haymitch. It’s so foreign that I don’t focus on what he’s saying at first. A shirt hits me in the face before I hone in on what he’s saying.

“You have to hurry, they’re going to bomb in five minutes.”

We learn on the hovercraft that Haymitch had been let in on a rebellion. It had gained steam when Peeta and I had defied the Capitol last year and now, they were turning the districts, bombing the Capitol, and finally taking over. We barely made it out of the city before the bombs exploded, the tall, shiny buildings of the Capitol falling like a child’s stack of blocks. 

No one knew who had lived or survived from the districts and very few survived from the Capitol. When we landed in District Thirteen, I was shocked to see a blonde haired, clean faced Effie standing in a simple pair of dark jeans and a loose yellow sweater. Judging by the kiss she and Haymitch shared in front of the hundred or so people landing, they had been together for a while.

The second day, they brought the living tributes from the arena to our camp to reunite with their families. Gale was not among them. Haymitch later told me that he had been killed shortly before the arena had been breeched. Toxic smoke from the Capitol had been released in order to prevent the Rebellion from getting them. 

On the third day, we learned that District Twelve had been bombed. My mother, Prim, Mr. and Mrs. Mellark and Peeta’s two older brothers all died. Both of us went a little crazy I think after that. We were shoved into an overflowing medical building full of other people losing their minds in sorrow. We eventually found each other again through the madness surrounding us. Some time later, they let us go back to our little cabin.

We found ways of coping with the overwhelming sadness and the loneliness of being the only ones left of our families. We discovered that sleeping next to each other helped keep the nightmares away most nights and that our routines held us together during the days. The calmness of it all is what we rely on a few weeks later when I realize that I’m pregnant. We’re both in shock first, both at the sheer reality of a baby growing inside of me as well as what we’re bringing a baby into. The government is still a mess and we’re living in a shack of a cabin along with a few thousand others in this new settlement. It was called District Thirteen, but few will call it that now. The Districts and Capitol are gone.

When all of this started, when I volunteered for my sister, I never realized how much would change. But, when I watch Peeta lay his head against my still flat stomach and whisper reassurances to our child, I realize that maybe this was always going to happen.


End file.
